Slider-Crank CAE Assignment Skills
Note: This assignment was given after a two week review of strength of materials
concepts from the required Stress Analysis course. The full solution to the stresses for
this problem (from Timoshenko and Goodier) was also given. This full solution includes
(small) normal stresses in the y direction and an additional term in the normal stress in
the x direction.
Project-Specific Skills
1) Give students a first intro into using ANSYS on a problem they feel comfortable
that they understand.
2) Let students understand that a finite element model will converge toward the
exact solution (within the theory of elasticity) as element resolution is increased.
Beam bending and other strength of materials relations are only approximations
to the full theory.
3) Give a first introduction to the importance of mesh refinement and how different
stresses are affected by it.
4) Reinforce the concept of Saint Venant’s effect (see part e, where students will
clearly see that their beam approximation does not hold near the ends of the
beam).
5) Reinforce the concepts of linearity and superposition (see part f – they do not
have to perform another analysis for the case of a load that is 1.5x the load they
modeled). This is a simple concept, but it is initially not obvious to students.
ME Curriculum Target Skills
1. Exposure to the latest software packages.
(High)
2. The ability to think critically when doing numerical work.
(High )
3. Skill at programming in a language such as C or FORTRAN and including exposure to
programming within packages such as Matlab
(N/A)
4. An understanding of the governing equations and methods used within software.
(Low – but it is a good first example that hints that the software is trying to
satisfy a general set of elasticity equations)